The Testaments is very loosely adapted from Atwood’s Booker-winning 2019 sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. It is also a follow-up to the enormously influential series, in which Elisabeth Moss played a woman on the run in Gilead. The dots between the two shows are joined with the return of Ann Dowd as the fearsome Aunt Lydia, a sort of future-shock Mother Superior who was gradually confirmed to have a human side behind the fire and brimstone. Both series were also created by the same person, Bruce Miller, for the US streamer Hulu.
Aunt Lydia remains the same disturbing mix of contradictions as the action picks up 15 years later. However, in contrast to the Atwood novel, here she is reduced largely to a background character. While other figures from The Handmaid’s Tale pop up too, the focus is on Agnes and her new friend Daisy (Scottish actress Lucy Halliday), a Canadian convert to the ways of Gilead.
She has come willingly to this authoritarian America but is quickly revealed to have an agenda beyond saving her soul. Other students tick off the usual US high-school stereotypes: the rich-kid bully (Rowan Blanchard), the dormouse with a dark side (Mattea Conforti), and so on.
The Handmaid’s Tale series had a bright beginning. But once it carried on beyond the pages of Atwood’s novel, the law of diminishing returns kicked in with a vengeance. Confused as to where it was going, it descended into sadism. At its worst, it seemed to take an almost wicked glee in its depiction of violence against women.